David Narrow, a BME CBID (Center for Bloomberg Innovation and Design) alumnus, shared his experiences with entrepreneurship startups on Wednesday as a part of the BME EDGE (Extramural Development in Graduate Education) Speaker Series.
Narrow graduated from the University of Rochester with Highest Distinction in BME as an undergraduate and pursued his graduate degree at Hopkins. During his time at Rochester he founded MonoMamo Cycling, a company that produces adaptive cycling equipment for stroke survivors and other people with physical limitations. Narrow worked in health care consulting in Boston for approximately a year. He is also the CEO of Sonavex, a company that uses ultrasound to detect blood clots in patients after tissue transplants. Narrow was recently named one of the “30 under 30” in the healthcare industry by Forbes magazine.
Narrow’s entrepreneurship is tightly linked to his education. The inspiration for MonoMano Cycling came from working on his senior design project and receiving feedback from physically limited patients, who had used special cycling equipment.
“What I found to be really exciting about doing BME-related adventures is that you get to have an impact on people’s lives,” Narrow said. “We get pictures and testimonies from my customers. This guy sent us an email saying he rode 22 miles on our trike, missing an arm. It makes me feel bad because I can’t even ride 22 miles on a bike. This type of feedback is what really keeps me going.”
Experience at Johns Hopkins CBID further assisted Narrow in his engineering business startup.
“At CBID we got a real taste of what it means to start on a greater magnitude, what a real business is,” he said.
Starting companies from scratch is a challenging process, but Narrow loves his work. BME-related business combines all three of his career interests — engineering, medicine and business. Multidisciplinary problem solving, room for freedom and creativity and the fact that no two days are the same keep him excited.
Narrow also shared with students the lessons he has learned from experience. Technology is important, he said, but only a small portion of his business.
He emphasized that finances are an important part of every business. EchoSure, the technology developed by his company Sonavex, could not have reached its full potential without the help of $1.1 billion raised over the years.
“Your job as a CEO is not really operational, but to make sure that you are financially viable,” Narrow said. “That’s the number one priority.”
Human resources is another crucial part of running a successful startup. Though technology is indispensable, it is more important to hire people who have expertise in that specific field. With the help from an experienced advisory team, Narrow and his colleagues were able to convert ideas into small business.
“What I learned the most about this experience is not necessarily about ultrasound or about technology or clinical application, which is what I thought I will be really spending my time on,” Narrow said. “We are engineers. We don’t have manufacturing capability. We don’t have sales and marketing capability. We don’t really have regulatory expertise. You need to make sure that other people are interested in working with you to help you meet your goals. And it’s very challenging to find groups not only have the technical qualities you need but also care about your business.”
For students who are thinking about starting their own business but don’t have a clear goal in mind, Narrow suggested they should find inspiration from interacting with others.
“If you don’t have an idea, it’s all about hanging out with people who have similar interests and goals. Make it fun,” he said. “Try to use your social time to connect with people with similar interests because you never know when an idea is going to pop up. It’s tough to be just lying in bed and have the ‘aha’ moment.”
Narrow also stressed the ability to present ideas to customers. Work experience in consulting taught him how to present to a senior management audience. A good presentation, Narrow said, should show why customers would want a product for financial reasons, what the business model is like and how investors can benefit. Entrepreneurs should have a clear pathway to have their products approved from a regulatory perspective. According to Narrow, complicated concepts should be presented simply.
Narrow also mentioned that entrepreneurs should carefully protect their intellectual property.
“Intellectual property is really important. You need to make sure that you can prevent other people from doing what you are doing. It’s typically a multi-faceted approach. You can’t rely on one pattern and think it’s going to be sufficient,” he said. “Finding a lot of different patterns to protect different pieces of your technology ends up being the best way to go.”
According to Narrow, appropriate attitudes greatly aid entrepreneurship. He thinks people should be confident, filter the advice they get and be open to changing designs. Entrepreneurs should aim big, Narrow said, but also appreciate every little victory.
“Since it’s such a long process, you gotta enjoy the small victories. Celebrate, be happy, and take a small break because life gets really stressful if you don’t,” he said.
Narrow emphasized to find a balance between work and life.
“You are never done with anything, ever,” he said. “Having a separate life that you can actually pursue your interest and be social and not let people talk to you about your company all the time is not easy but important.”
BME faculty members, including professor Nicholas Durr from BME CBID, praised Narrow’s discussion.
“David has a really unique story. A lot of students are interested in doing something similar for their career after Hopkins. For students to see someone that has recently successfully moved from a degree at Hopkins to starting a company based on what he studied here is inspiring,” Durr said. “It gets people thinking they can actually do it themselves and thinking about what skills they would need and milestones they need to achieve to set things up, so they can have the opportunity. And for me, it’s really exciting to see someone materialize what he worked on in a course.”
Durr lamented the event’s low turnout.
“It was disappointing how few people were there,” Durr said. “There was about only 15 people. Within the CBID program we have about 22 master students and over 110 undergraduates that are working on projects like what David did when he was here. I think all of them would be interested in the topic he was going over. So it was a failure on our part for not advertising it better and not maybe finding a time that works better for students. I wished that I should have brought it up in class so all of my students would know what a fantastic opportunity it is to listen to him speak.”
